You reminded me of a book I read, and enjoyed, a long time ago. It was called “The Long Secret” by Louise Fitzhugh–the author of “Harriett the Spy”.

It is about someone who finds their voice. Who learns how to say “fuck if I fucking well feel like it”.

Not a deep read, but reading doesn’t always have to be deep to be meaningful.

Thank you everyone who took the time to leave your experiences, thoughts, etc. I don’t always know how to respond, but I read everything and I don’t take your kindness for granted.

I say get off the rock of forgiveness and drop it off a cliff onto Hank. Oopsie!

Daniel Horblatt told me I was the best little boy in the world, charmed my family into thinking that he was legit, brought be presents, took me places … and raped me. It’s been a 42 year journey from self-hate to hating him to meds to 12-step to self-help books to screaming to crying to acting out … you get the picture. It’s been a journey through hell and back again.

I believe that YOU get to believe, feel, swear, smash and do whatever YOU think is best for YOU. Screw everyone else. This is YOUR journey, it’s YOUR pain, and it’s YOU get to do with as you best see fit. NO ONE has the right to tell you what to do with it … me included. You DO NOT have to forgive your perpetrator. EVER.

I’ve never forgiven Daniel, and I would gladly piss on his grave. Sure I understand that he was a fucked up bastard (literally), sure I get that someone did that to him, and sure I can now see the royally screwed drunk who thought that he could act out his shit on me … I have and will never forgive him …

But I have let go, at my own pace, I have spent an awesome 2 years with other guys, in therapy, who were molested, I have allowed my relationship to that experience shit, I have shared it, cried about it, whacked a punching bag and screamed about it … but that was MY process, yours gets to look like yours.

I will never get to “walk away from it” but I no longer have to stand in it’s earth shattering clutches, because the earth moved when it was time to move, the changes happened when they were supposed to happen: I just showed up, shared my feeling, took the advice I liked, tossed the rest, owned my process, and kept moving on.

I appreciate your “bravery” in sharing this. It’s still bullshit in the worlds cultures that men aren’t assaulted. We are. It sucks … and we move on.

- Kenji

However, my cousin molested me once and made a few attempts to get into my pants on later occasions. He was around eleven or twelve and I was six. I blocked it out of my memory for the longest time, only to have every detail suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks at the worst possible time in my life — adolescence — when I was still struggling to understand why I never had any luck with girls and why I was more attracted to guys.

Being molested was a convenient thing to blame my homosexuality on, but eventually I came to realize that I have always been gay — it’s just that I wasn’t brought up in a gay-friendly environment with three brothers and a father who was a firefighter. Then I realized that the molestation did not make me who I am — it did not define me. I am who I am because of all the love and support I got from my family and friends and neighbors — not because some pubescent pervert wanted to fondle a naive little boy.

When I started reading your post, I was worried that you were going to say that you had “found Jesus” and “forgave” your father for molesting you. In fact, my skin began to crawl just a little bit. But I’m glad you have reached the final result of non-forgiveness and simply cut your ties to him. And frankly, your last paragraph (particularly the last sentence) are the perfect ending to your post.

If you’d ever like to share any feelings with a friend (and former classmate), feel free to email me in confidence. I would really like to exchange dialogue on this matter with you and possibly learn from your experience and teach you from mine.

I knew enough to distance myself from him when I was 18. With the help of therapeutic counseling I attempted to effect a reconciliation with him on several occasions . His old habits never changed, and each reconciliation ended with me angrier than the time before. I finally severed all ties with him and his family. I had no contact with him for at least another decade.

When I heard he was dying, I called him out of some misguided sense of duty. When he realized it was me, he gasped: “My wonderful son!”. I had to cut the call short. Much too little and much too late.

I’ve never forgiven him and I don’t plan to. I don’t hold out hope for any sort of healing to the wounds he inflicted for 40 years. I’ve accepted the situation, and mourn the fact that I never had a “real” father. I have trouble watching fathers and their children interacting in a loving manner. He left me damaged in ways I’m only beginning to realize.

But I don’t regret my decision to cut him out of my life at all.